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OOM #18 – Gamera tai Shinkai kaijû Jigura (1971)

Hell yes! Here we are, the madness is already more than halfway through and I’ve had no problems so far, amazing stuff is going on in my life and the world is happy, but we all know that deep inside our souls, the horror of Halloween is unavoidable and terribly imperious to the souls of the human beings. Look the way in which it has taken over the soul of James Rolfe in this video regarding the last Gamera film in the original series, ‘Gamera vs. Zigra’ (1971). You can also read my sadness right below.

This movie is strange, because it starts really good, it makes a silly yet heartwarming parallel between raising up children and training dolphins and other sea creatures in the japanese version of Sea World. Then, it completely shifts in tone, from an almost documentary approach to both experiences, it then goes wild and silly with the apparition of a spaceship that rapts two kids and their respective parents, only to be confronted by Zigras, which is actually a japanese looking woman that pretends to take over the world in behalf of Zigras, though she’s also called Zigras, and it seems clear that this is a common conscience that has taken over this otherwise very kind japanese woman. The kids manage to escape the ship with their parents, but she is conducted by the big Zigras (the monster that Gamera will fight eventually) to pursue the kids and kill them because they know too much! The sequence that follows this woman as she goes down to Earth to go after the kids is hilarious and cheesy at the same time, it features her nabbing a bikini to make a driver stop and drive her to Sea World, and there she chases the kids in an almost Scooby Doo fashion, with gateways and paths that lead to unexpected places, all this with a very asinine music that really doesn’t bring anything interesting to the scene, it would’ve been great to see this with a frenetic or even silly music.

And in a sense that’s what happens with this movie, it seems like a bunch of missed opportunities but in the mere technical side of things, including how the script was built around the premise of the monsters fighting. The art of the spaceship is really impressive, colorful and interesting, but then the set dissapears, and whenever we get inside some other gadget that is technologically advanced, we are given a very murky and not that beautiful design, it’s as if the art director and production designer had quit halfway through the shooting of the film, and they decided to just bring two guys straight out of college. I’m not here to really diss the film, because it manages to get its message across, much like ‘Godzilla vs. Hedora’ (1971) released the same year, but just like that movie, it seems as if the most important thing was the premise and not how the actual movie was made, filled with faults and mistakes that could’ve been easily avoided if the director (the classic Noriaki Yuasa) actually paid attention to what was going on in the set. The fight scenes are decent and the plot is still understandable, and the sequences with the woman controlled by the alien were hilarious and well made, enough to make the grade go up a bit.

Amicus Productions: Horror-Scifi

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965)
The Skull (1965)
Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965)
The Psychopath (1966)
Dalek's Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. (1966)
The Terrornauts (1967)
The Deadly Bees (1967)
They Came from Beyond Space (1967)
Torture Garden (1967)
The Mind of Mr. Soames (1970)
The House That Dripped Blood (1971)
I, Monster (1971)
Tales from the Crypt (1972)
What Became of Jack and Jill? (1972)Asylum (1972)
The Vault of Horror (1973)-- And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973)
From Beyond the Grave (1974)
Madhouse (1974)
The Beast Must Die (1974)
The Land That Time Forgot (1975)
At the Earth's Core (1976)
The People That Time Forgot (1977)
The Monster Club (1981)

Hammer Pictures: Horror-Fantasy-Sci Fi

The Mystery of the Marie Celeste (1935)
Man in Black (1949)
Dick Barton Strikes Back (1949)
Dick Barton at Bay (1950)
Four Sided Triangle (1953)
Spaceways (1953)
The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)
X: The Unknown (1956)The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
Quatermass 2 (1957)
The Abominable Snowman (1957)
Tales of Frankenstein (1958)Dracula (1958)The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)
The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959)
The Mummy (1959)
The Stranglers of Bombay (1960)The Brides of Dracula (1960)
The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)
The Terror of the Tongs (1961)
Taste of Fear (1961)
The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)
Shadow of the Cat (1961)
Captain Clegg (1962)
The Phantom of the Opera (1962)
Paranoiac (1963)
The Damned (1963)
Maniac (1963)
The Kiss of the Vampire (1963)
The Old Dark House (1963)
Nightmare (1964)
The Evil of Frankenstein (1964)
The Gorgon (1964)
The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964)
Fanatic (1965)
She (1965)
The Nanny (1965)
The Plague of the Zombies (1966)Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)
The Reptile (1966)
Rasputin: The Mad Monk (1966)
The Witches (1966)
One Million Years B.C. (1966)
Slave Girls (1967)
The Mummy's Shroud (1967)
Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)
Quatermass and the Pit (1967)
Journey to Midnight (1968)
Journey into Darkness (1968)
The Vengeance of She (1968)
The Lost Continent (1968)
The Devil Rides Out (1968)
"Journey to the Unknown" (1968)Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)
Frankenstein Must be Destroyed (1969)
Moon Zero Two (1969)Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)
Crescendo (1970)
The Vampire Lovers (1970)
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)
The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)Scars of Dracula (1970)
Lust for a Vampire (1971)
Countess Dracula (1971)
Creatures the World Forgot (1971)
Twins of Evil (1971)
Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971)
Hands of the Ripper (1971)
Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971)
Vampire Circus (1972)Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)
Straight on Till Morning (1972)
Fear in the Night (1972)
Demons of the Mind (1972)The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)
Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter (1974)
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974)The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)
To the Devil a Daughter (1976)
"Hammer House of Horror" (1980)
"Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense" (1984)
Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror (1984)
Beyond the Rave (2008)
Let Me In (2010)The Resident (2011)